Hi there folks,

While trying to learn about communism, I'm having problems finding literature that provides and example life under Communism. What I do find is propaganda either against or for it, involving unrealistic and bombastic content that is clearly not rooted in reality.

I'm not looking for historical content because I'm just trying to figure out what a life that the group is striving for would be like.

Thanks for your time!

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2742219

Check out the article below:

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WASHINGTON—On the morning of June 5, a coalition of D.C. labor union locals led a picket action in front of the John A. Wilson Building on Pennsylvania Ave, which houses Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office and the D.C. Council. The picket action was one of the first labor-led demonstrations in the country featuring a coalition of unions fighting for a ceasefire resolution at a municipal level.

The coalition featured leaders and rank-and-file members from the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA), SAG-AFTRA & Sister Guild Members for Ceasefire, IWW DMV Education Workers Organizing Committee, UAW, American Postal Workers Union (APWU), AFA-CWA, SEIU Local 500, ATU Local 689, and the Georgetown Alliance of Graduate Employees.

The demonstration follows nearly eight months of Israel’s U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza and countless efforts by the D.C. for Ceasefire Now Coalition to get a councilmember to introduce a ceasefire resolution on the local level to join the over 100 municipalities across the United States that have already passed them.

To date, leaders of local labor unions like the National Nurses United, SAG-AFTRA, and CLUW have all participated in actions in an individual capacity, including press conferences, mass meetings, and disruptions of council proceedings but this marked the first official action by their unions. This is a major advance for the unions in the area on the ceasefire issue.

“As a union that stands for equality, social justice, human and labor rights, APWU members have been shocked and saddened by the tragic and ongoing violence in Israel and Palestine,” APWU President Mark Dimondstein said.

“A humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding in Gaza and worsening by the day. As a District resident and a labor leader, I join this urgent call on the D.C. Council to pass a ceasefire resolution now.”

“Rank-and-file workers and union activists have been in the streets of DC for months demanding a permanent ceasefire and self-determination for the Palestinian people,” Metro D.C. CLUW President Chelsea Bland said.

“It is past time for the D.C. Council to heed the call from residents, workers, and visitors of the District and be on the right side of history. With each passing day, we are watching absolute terror being rained down upon the people of Gaza. The Metro D.C. Chapter of the Coalition of Labor Union Women calls on the D.C. Council to pass a ceasefire resolution now.”

Leaders of Wednesday’s effort vowed to continue pressuring the D.C. Council and to involve the labor movement on a more consistent basis, potentially leading to a multi-day or weekly picket in front of the Wilson Building.

With the D.C. primary election season ending with a majority of pro-ceasefire candidates winning their races and the budget period ending on June 12, the Council now has a mandate from the D.C. community to finally speak out on this issue after several months of ignoring and being dismissive of their constituency.

Last week, I found a used book in a store, called "what the Soviet worker receives besides their salary" (or something like that, translated it literally from my language). It's a short, 40-pages pamphlet written in 1959 by the then Soviet Minister of Finance, A. Zveriev.

On a section regarding housing, the pamphlet claims: "The workers and employees of the USSR pay insignificant rent compared to that paid by workers in capitalist countries. If in the latter, the rent expenditure absorbs 25 to 30% of the family budget, in the USSR, the rent including communal services doesn't rise, on average, above 4 to 5% of the family budget".

Leaving aside how much they paid in the USSR for rent, I want to dedicate a moment to examine this 25-30% expenditure of the family budget in rent in developed capitalist countries. I looked up the data for my western-european, developed country, and for the bottom 50% of families by budget, the housing expenditure actually ranges from 45% to 35% of the family budget in 2023 (latest data available).

Let's forget about the fact that family budgets can't be compared from 1959 to now because nowadays there are more workers per household as a consequence of the mass-incorporation of women in the workplace and young adults staying with their parents because of housing prices. Even if we forget about that, after 65 years of technological and scientific progress, in which the population of western capitalist countries has actually stabilized, the prices of housing as a percentage of family budgets have risen by about 50%, compared to the numbers given in an anticapitalist pamphlet written by a literal Soviet finance minister.

There is no reason for this other than the commodification of a HUMAN RIGHT such as housing. If Cuba and the USSR solved housing for everyone 50+ years ago, there's no actual, physical or economical problem preventing us from doing so. It's purely a desired consequence of our current system.

Biden has done more to undermine the US empire in the last 8 months than Trump did in 4 years. Biden is exposing the contradictions of US empire in a way that Trump could never.

If Trump was president, then the mainstream narrative would be that the genocide in Gaza was simply because of Trump and Bibi's leadership. And you know what? Given how past presidents were able to rein in Israel when polite society started sympathizing with Palestinians, it would be believable. Instead, we get to see front and center, how a man that's been at the top echelons of us foreign policy for decades approves and supports genocide. This is the establishment's genocidal war.

In other words, Trump is perceived as an aberration, even when hes just continuing the same US foreign policy that weve been doing for decades. Moving the embassy to Jerusalem is still framed as entirely Trump's decision, even though he was just enacting a policy that Biden voted for in the 90s. And of course Biden did nothing to reverse that move, or even try to extract concessions to move peace talks forward.

Biden is damaging the "international rules-based order" in a way that would make Dick Cheney blush. Bush at least tried to put a veneer of international law on the criminal invasion of Iraq. But it appears the US and Israel are ready to burn the UN to the ground in order to carry out this genocide. Trump would be doing the same exact thing, except he would also serve as a scape goat for the liberal order (just get trump out of office, and we can go back to rule-following)

Don't get me wrong, they're both excellent accelerationist candidates. The world is watching two senile, hateful, egotistical vile men fight for control of the empire as the world burns.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2667069

Sneaky Biden.

Also, subscribe to this person, trying to help 'em out.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4651235

Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism by Robert Chapman is what I'll be exploring.

Anyone want to read along with me?

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4534411

The Spectre of Communism is haunting the internet

https://www.mlreadinghub.org/study-materials/reading-list

I wanna self-study a bunch, with the goal of having an idea of how to organize better.

Is this a good reading list?

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2492720

The five books from the image that I got are:

In the Shadow of Liberty: The Invisible History of Immigrant Detention in the United States by Ana Raquel Minian

Third Worlds Within: Multiethnic Movements and Transnational Solidarity by Daniel Widener, Vijay Prashad (Foreword)

The States of the Earth: An Ecological and Racial History of Secularization by Mohamed Amer Meziane, Jonathan Adjemian (Translator)

Ron Carey and the Teamsters: How a UPS Driver Became the Greatest Union Reformer of the 20th Century by Putting Members First by Ken Reiman

Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism by Robert Chapman

These five books sit atop by vinyl record-player or gramophone or whatever you call it nowadays (I think people just say record-player). The very last one is the one I want to read the most, Empire of Normality. The third one, The States of the Earth, seems very interesting to me and I think everyone else should read it. The first two seemed like no-brainers to someone like me and the fourth one is just 'cause like labor unions and Monthly Review (I always read Monthly Review and Science & Society, the last two Marxist academic journals still standing).

Currently reading:

Das Kapital by Karl Marx

An Ideological History of the CPC by Huang Yibing (translated into English from Chinese)

A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin

Das Kapital is what I'm reading for the second time. I plan to finish it this time. The second book is apart of a trilogy of books called An Ideological History of the CPC (Volumes 1 - 3), each written by a separate author, and translated from Chinese into English. It costs about $170 for the entire trilogy box-set, but you'll frequently see it on sale on Amazon.com. A Dance with Dragons is the fifth book in the series A Song of Ice and Fire, right after the fourth book A Feast of Crows (which the bad TV show Game of Thrones is very loosely based off of).

And that's about all I'm reading and all of which I will read. The rest I may get from my local library (everyone should patronize their local library; they're currently being attacked by evangelicals, TERFs, and MAGAts).

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2483233

Check it out.

A friend of mine wrote this.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2482605

From the article:

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Mayor Brandon Johnson‘s office said they were informed of the University of Chicago Police Department’s intention to dismantle the encampment early Tuesday morning and reached out to “reiterate serious safety and operational concerns about this plan.”

In an updated statement released Tuesday afternoon, the mayor’s office said University police requested Chicago police’s assistance but CPD “expressed an unwillingness to participate.”

University police “ultimately decided to move forward with the removal independently,” according to the mayor’s office.

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Damn, even Mayor Brandon Johnson can't get them to stop and I like that guy.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2463555

Read the entire thing here:

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Last week, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey lambasted the United Auto Workers (UAW) in a social media post on X (formerly Twitter) ahead of a union vote at the Mercedes-Benz plant in Vance, Alabama, set for mid-May. Ivey has been campaigning for months against autoworker unionization in the state.

Ivey’s post referenced an anti-union op-ed by Nathaniel Ledbetter, speaker of the Alabama House of Representatives, to which Ivey added: “The UAW is NOT the good guy here. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for calling out the UAW for what it is — corrupt, shifty and a dangerous leech.” Her post went semi-viral, garnering over 400,000 views, and it was reposted by her close political ally in resistance to autoworker unionization, the Business Council of Alabama (BCA).

While Ivey’s fierce opposition to the UAW is no secret, what was noteworthy about her post was the so-called media outlet she cited: Yellowhammer News.

Yellowhammer is no ordinary “news” site. It is co-owned by a longtime political consultant, Paul Shashy, who has deep ties to the Alabama political and business establishment, which is driving the opposition to the UAW. Indeed, in March 2023, the Business Council of Alabama, which is coordinating a statewide anti-union campaign, announced its hiring of Shashy as a political strategist.

None of this appears to be disclosed in Yellowhammer’s day-to-day coverage of topics, like the autoworker union drive, despite the owner’s apparent conflict of interest. Moreover, while Shashy purchased Yellowhammer in late 2023, its past owners have been lobbyists and consultants for major state politicians and executive directors of the Alabama GOP.

All told, the relationships between Yellowhammer’s ownership and Alabama’s anti-union politicians and business groups shed more light on what unionizing autoworkers are up against. Essentially, Alabama’s anti-union corporate forces have at their service one of the state’s biggest “media” networks, which is owned by someone who directly works for the BCA. As it churns out coverage and op-eds hostile to the UAW, those same corporate forces and their political allies can then invoke all this as “news.”

“A Partisan Site”: The Rise of Yellowhammer

On its website, Yellowhammer News claims to be “Alabama’s second-largest media outlet.” It tells advertisers that its news site has 57 million annual pageviews, 35,000 email subscribers, 25 radio affiliates and TV broadcasting to over 800,000 households. It has 107,000 followers on Facebook.

Yellowhammer describes itself as “Alabama’s preeminent outlet for news, analysis and much more.” It says it is “committed to delivering the news in a manner that reflects the state of Alabama, its people and their values.” Its catchphrase is “We know Alabama.”

But Yellowhammer is far from a regular news site. It has a documented history as a conservative operation owned and run by GOP political consultants and lobbyists with deep ties to corporate interests in Alabama.

According to a 2019 Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) story, Yellowhammer was founded in 2011 by a political consultant named Cliff Sims, who also served as the site’s CEO. Later revelations showed that two extremely well-connected lobbyists, Tim Howe and John Ross, were co-owners of Yellowhammer.

In January 2011, Howe and Ross became principals of an influential new lobbying firm, Swatek, Azbell, Howe & Ross. At the time, Ross was the executive director of the Alabama Republican Party, a position Howe also previously held. Their firm disclosed numerous clients that included prominent Alabama corporations, trade associations and advocacy groups.

It wasn’t known until 2014 that Howe and Ross were — in the words of the CJR story — the “benefactors” of Yellowhammer. This revelation came after Eddie Curran, an Alabama-based independent investigative journalist, published a leaked email with Yellowhammer CEO Sims seeking guidance from lobbyist Howe — referred to by Sims in the email as “Ghost Writer” — around a video that Sims was working on.

Yellowhammer’s ties to corporate power and the GOP were documented in the CJR story, which reported that Yellowhammer had received over $185,000 from advertising and in-kind donations from Republican PACs and political campaigns. Later investigations from NPR and Floodlight suggested links between Alabama Power, the state’s powerful electric utility, and Yellowhammer.

Yellowhammer has long been conservative in its orientation, but Curran told Truthout the site’s politics is not its main driver. “The issue with Yellowhammer is not its ideology, agree with it or not,” said Curran. “Think of the conservative politics as the bait. Yellowhammer’s true raison d’etre, so to speak — and for that matter, its business model — is as a pay-for-play operation.”

New Yellowhammer Owner Is a Republican and Business Consultant

In 2017, Yellowhammer’s founder, Sims, stepped down as CEO to join the Trump administration as assistant communications director for White House message strategy. In 2018, Sims was reassigned as senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Yellowhammer changed ownership in 2017 — Allison Ross, the wife of John Ross, became a co-owner — and then, in August 2023, another important new ownership change was announced.

Paul Shashy, a prominent Alabama political consultant, purchased the Yellowhammer media network, along with Thomas Harris, the former president and CEO of Merchant Capital. They moved Yellowhammer’s outlets into a new umbrella entity, YHN Media Group LLC.

Shashy was the campaign manager for both of Alabama’s sitting U.S. senators, Katie Britt and Tommy Tuberville. A 2018 Yellowhammer profile noted that Shashy had the “trust” of “the state’s biggest businesses and top-tier Republican candidates” and stated that “Shashy is going to be shaping Alabama elections and influencing the entire political scene for the next half-century.”

Shashy is a principal of the consulting firm SR Communications, which counts the Alabama Senate Republican Caucus among its clients. Alabama public records, which list Shashy as an “LLC member” of the firm, show that SR Communications has a $60,000 contract through December 2024 to provide “communications services” for the Senate president pro tempore, who is currently Alabama State Sen. Greg Reed. In August 2023, Tim Howe, the former lobbyist who was Yellowhammer’s former owner and editor, was appointed as Reed’s chief of staff.

Public records reveal that numerous other Alabama Republican political candidates and judges have paid tens of thousands of dollars to SR Communications, Shashy’s firm, over the past year alone, and over $350,000 since 2021.

For example, 13 filings from December 2021 through January 2024 show Alabama Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth paid SR Communications a total of $21,100. In March 2024, Twinkle Andress Cavanaugh, Republican president of the Alabama Public Service Commission, filed a $10,000 payment to SR Communications for polling services. In November 2023, ProgressPAC, the Business Council of Alabama’s PAC, reimbursed SR Communications for a total of $2,089 as an “Expense Paid For GOTV In-Kind Contribution for HD16 Bryan Brinyark,” who was running for the Alabama House.

Filings show payments to SR Communications from numerous other candidates, ranging from state school board candidates to judges to members of the Alabama House of Representatives.

Shashy’s Yellowhammer co-owner, Thomas Harris, is also no minor figure. While leading Merchant Capital, it long ranked as Alabama’s top investment bank, managing over a billion dollars’ worth of government bonds, and was among the top financial underwriters in the nation.

Shashy, Yellowhammer and the Business Council of Alabama

A few months before Shashy purchased Yellowhammer, he was hired by the Business Council of Alabama.

“The Business Council of Alabama (BCA) is proud to announce the hiring of… Paul Shashy with SR Communications as political strategist,” said a March 2023 statement. Yellowhammer also wrote up the news.

As Truthout previously reported, the BCA is a statewide business association whose core 15-member governing leadership is composed of some of Alabama’s most powerful corporations, including the state’s biggest bank, electric utility and health care company. The BCA’s larger 135-member board includes representatives from automakers Toyota, Honda and Mercedes.

The BCA is a key player coordinating the statewide campaign against the UAW and autoworker unionization in Alabama. It started an anti-UAW website and has published anti-union op-eds. The BCA is also closely allied with Governor Ivey in resisting autoworker unionization. The BCA is one of Ivey’s top donors, and key corporations within the BCA governing leadership are also top Ivey donors. Top staffers of the Ivey administration formerly worked for the BCA.

Alabama’s Katie Britt was the CEO and president of the BCA from 2019 to 2021, after which she successfully ran for the U.S. Senate in a campaign managed by Shashy.

Yellowhammer coverage of the UAW has been hostile, using language that frames the union as villainous. For example, a March 4 op-ed by Clay Scofield, who stepped down last year as the majority leader in the Alabama Senate to work for the BCA, was titled “Even a small dose of labor union snake oil could prove poisonous to Alabama’s economy.”

An April 3 story by a staff writer on UAW President Shawn Fain was titled “Union boss escalates attacks on Governor Kay Ivey in tirade at North Carolina rally,” and referred to Fain’s “assault” on “Alabama’s Mercedes-Benz leadership, Governor Kay Ivey and the Business Council of Alabama.”

An April 9 story uncritically recited Alabama House Majority Leader Scott Stadthagen’s message that the “UAW’s Alabama expansion is an attempt to hijack state’s success.” The April 25 op-ed by Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter that Kay Ivey cited warned about “the UAW’s trail of destruction” and its “legacy of corruption, destruction and usury.”

The list could go on. None of these articles appear to disclose that they were published while Yellowhammer’s owner is, according to the most recent publicly available records, working for the BCA, the group that is coordinating the statewide campaign, in close alliance with Kay Ivey, against autoworker unionization in the state.

In contrast, Yellowhammer’s coverage of the BCA is much rosier, with uncritical staff write-ups on BCA events and initiatives that essentially parrot the subjects they cover, whether that be the BCA members or BCA-allied politicians.

Truthout reached out over email to Yellowhammer News, Paul Shashy and the Business Council for Alabama for comment but did not receive responses from them.

“Corrupt” and “Shifty”?

All this brings us back to Kay Ivey invoking Yellowhammer in her campaign against autoworker unionization and the BCA reposting Ivey’s quip about the UAW being “corrupt, shifty and a dangerous leech.”

What this Truthout analysis reveals is that this well-known Alabama “media” outlet publishing anti-union content referenced by politicians and business groups resisting the UAW is, in fact, owned by a prominent consultant who works for these same anti-union forces and who is deeply embedded within their wider political operation.

These conflicts surrounding Yellowhammer as a new source offer a window into the wider influence machine of Alabama conservatives and business groups. Nor should the irony be lost that Governor Ivey calls the UAW “corrupt” while invoking such news sources.

Copyright © Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.

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Read the entire article. It's great and relevant.

Glad the UAW and several other unions are supporting the protests.

why porkies get into philantropy? it seems that the answer is not "because they're philantropists!"